Learning Pains II

Learning Pains II

I knew startups were hard. As many times as I’ve heard it, I keep
forgetting that they are really fucking hard. Sometimes it would be
easier to just throw in the towel. So many distractions: family,
drinking, friends, ideas, day jobs, life issues, etc. My partners and I
agree on some things:

Our lack of one common focus could be hurting us. That is to say,
that we are working on multiple projects at once. We don’t know for
sure, but it certainly does feel like it could be. Right now, we are
working on Sports Fan apps, consulting, and DJ Explode.

We are not getting enough shit done.

Many excuses were thrown. One thing that I felt was unfairly targeted is
blogging. I’ve
written
why I think blogging is essential before. In summary, one should blog
because:

It can be used as a brain dump and an organizer of thoughts.

It is journal of your journey. I love reading past articles and
analyzing how I’ve improved or need more improvement.

It allows me to communicate my ideas.

I can be given feedback on my ideas.

In time, I woud like to think that I’ll be seen as expert in
entrepreneurship. I realize this could be decades.

I feel responsible for leading this ship to the promised land. No, I’m
not CEO, I’m just one of thefounders with the desire to lead - and I’ve
been the first to fail many of times. I think in the short term we can
improve by doing two simple things:

Clearly define our action items in short time periods. In fact, we
should be creating SMART
goals.
This will help us to stay accountable to each other and to achieve
small steps towards our big goals.

Stop going out so damn much. Some weeks, we might go out a few
nights a week. Other weeks, not so much. Regardless, if you want to
build a startup, that needs to be the first to go. This doesn’t mean
that we need to stop socializing all together, but it does mean that
we should cut back and get some work done instead.

Overall, I felt our meeting started out with a lot of hostility and with
little progress towards positive resolution. In the end, I believe that
we made one more positive step towards our long-term future. We reminded
ourselves that this race is a
marthon
and not a sprint, and that our success is
inevetible.